Quick help requested on a Weber Kettle venting question

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DavidLSI

Knows what a fatty is.
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I am visiting my folks in AZ and we bought a brisket to smoke on their Weber Kettle grill. Ii just went out to empty the ash tray and see that this model only has the there big openings for venting at the bottom and no rotating tri-finned plated to close off the vents.

My question is should use
1) some foil to cover one or more of the opening
2) leave them open and hope I can control things with the top vent
3) cover them all and poke holes in the foil to open as needed
4) or something else that I did not think of

Any input before I start the fire (which will be in about an hour), will be appreciated.

Thanks
DavidLSI
 
TYPICALLY, I've found that I'm better off to have my exhasut vents all open and control the fire with the intake vents, no matter what smoker I'm using. I find you get a cleaner burning fire that way as you're literally sucking air into the intakes, which causes a convection effect.

You can, however, accomplish temp control by keeping the bottom open and just choke down the exhaust (top) vents. I think you may run the risk of a stale "creosotish" smoke.

If you're planning "low 'n' slow" I'd say close off 2 of the 3 bottom vents with foil. If I'm trying for 225-250 on the kettle, my bottom vents are nearly all closed, so this should be enough open vent space. Then you can do the final adjustments with the top vent. The only "bad" thing about this is your air will only come in through one vent, but since you'll probably have the coals off to one side (at least that's how I'd do it), just leave the vent on that side open, to keep the air moving through the fire.

Don't forget.....if you use the minion method (even on the kettle) you'll double or triple your burn time on the fuel.



Good luck!
 
Pretty much it's been said. I also would keep the top vent wide open,close two intake vents then I would roll a few balls of foil the size of the remaining vent holes so I can plug them as needed from the outside. Good luck and keep us posted. +2 on the kettle minion method.
 
I use mine for this all the time. Typically what i doo is stash all the coals to one side. Then i will set the vents ( at the fattest part of the vent) to about a 1/8 inch open and the top vent to about 3/16 gap and it will give me a temp of about 250-275 for a good 5hrs before i have to adjust. Good luck i hope this helps!!!
 
Thanks these are great responses, they are helpful and I can proceed with some confidence.
 
rogwadd said:
Nice video. However, your pizza pron should be illegal. I could not bear to watch anymore. Awesome job.
Click to expand...

Thanks I can only thank Ray for being a willing subject on the brick oven pizza videos. It good to hear it was watched beyond the family involved. That was one of the longer ones I put together and was hard to get to the 20 or so minutes that it ended up with, I had over 1.5 hours of content to whittle down from.
 
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